A major theme of Pinker's two books on progress is that modernity replaces ties of clan and tribe with individual freedom and institutionalized social order.

The two books are The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) and Enlightenment Now (2018). True: both books give prominent treatment, such as chapters, sections or repeated discussion, to modernity or the state replacing clan, tribal or kin-based order (feuding, honour cultures) with individual rights or freedom and institutional order (Leviathan, rule of law, commerce, the civilising process). Mostly true: the theme is prominent in both books, but the stress on freedom or on institutions is clearly weaker in one of them. Mixed: the theme is major in one book but only incidental in the other. Mostly false: the theme appears in both books only in passing and is not a major theme. False: neither book addresses the theme.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature The Independent Review (review essay by Faschwin De Wolf) · 2012

   “But Pinker puts great emphasis on the rise of democracy and “human rights” as forces that further pacified governments and reduced violence against their own subjects.”

2. E2 The better angels of our nature (2011) by Steven Pinker | Open Library Open Library (Internet Archive) · 4 October 2017

   “Pinker argues that thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.”

3. E3 Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now Is Mostly Right National Review · 14 July 2018

   “Though no one gave happiness questionnaires to the people who lived in the close-knit communities that were loosened by modernity, much of the great art composed during the transition brought to life their dark side: the provincialism, conformity, tribalism, and Taliban-like restrictions on women’s autonomy.”

4. E4 Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now Is Mostly Right National Review · 14 July 2018

   “With a deluge of charts he shows that 200 years of property protections and international trade have helped create a world that is healthier, wealthier, happier, smarter, safer, more peaceful, and more democratic.”

5. E5 Make Money, Not War: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (review essay) The Independent Review (Aschwin de Wolf) · 2012

   “But Pinker puts great emphasis on the rise of democracy and “human rights” as forces that further pacified governments and reduced violence against their own subjects.”

6. E6 Make Money, Not War: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (review essay) The Independent Review (Aschwin de Wolf) · 2012

   “He explains this difference by positing that the American South has a strong tradition that values honor and self-enforcement of justice.”

7. E7 Make Money, Not War: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (review essay) The Independent Review (Aschwin de Wolf) · 2012

   “One of the problems with attributing the decline in violence to Leviathan, as Pinker himself notes, is that countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands witnessed declines in violence in the absence of strong centralization”

8. E8 Enlightenment Now - Wikipedia Wikipedia · 16 February 2018

   “It argues that the Enlightenment values of reason, science, and humanism have brought progress, and that health, prosperity, safety, peace, and happiness have tended to rise worldwide.”

9. E9 Pinker: Better Angels: Passages and Outline from the Preface Mark R. Kelly (blog) · 6 September 2017

   “How, in particular, are we to make sense of modernity — of the erosion of family, tribe, tradition, and religion by the forces of individualism, cosmopolitanism, reason, and science?”

10. E10 War No More Foreign Affairs · 18 December 2011

    “Thus, he describes two fundamental transitions: from the anarchy of hunting and gathering societies to the controlled violence of early states and then from a “culture of honor” associated with these states to a “culture of dignity” characteristic of the better moments of modernity.”

11. E11 http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/ ... Boston Review (review by Claude Fischer, hosted on UC Berkeley sociology site)

    “Largely responsible for taming violence were the emergence of states, especially democracies; secular humanism, which values saving lives rather than souls; and the rationality—science, reason, intelligence—of modern life.”

12. E12 War No More Foreign Affairs · 18 December 2011

    “In Pinker’s portrait of the modern era, the state is far in the background, even as it becomes far more capable of both good and evil.”

The evidence shows the theme of modernity and the state replacing tribal and honour-based order is major in The Better Angels of Our Nature [E2, E9, E10, E11]. For Enlightenment Now there is only one review passage on close-knit communities and tribalism [E3] and one on property protections and trade [E4]. That does not show whether the theme is major or only incidental in that book, so the evidence cannot separate the mixed outcome from the true or mostly true outcomes.